Tony Blair regrets inability to topple Mugabe

By Fortune Tazvida

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has expressed regret that he was not able to use his time in office to topple Zimbabwean dictator President Robert Mugabe. Writing in his memoirs Blair argued that globalization has made military intervention in rogue regimes overseas more necessary than ever.

“People often used to say to me: If you got rid of the gangsters in Sierra Leone, [Slobodan] Milosevic, the Taliban and Saddam, why can’t you get rid of Mugabe? The answer is I would have loved to, but it wasn’t practical (since, in his case, and for reasons I never quite understood, the surrounding African nations maintained a lingering support for him and would have opposed any action strenuously).”

Foreign policy based on “narrow self-interest” is outdated and instead “Global alliances” had to be based on “shared global values,” he argued. A judgment has to be made. “If change will not come by evolution, should it be done by revolution? Should those who have the military power contemplate doing so?”